The Salvation War: Pantheocide. Part Forty One Up

[Baughn]

Cthulhu had the telepathic ability to render everything within a few thousand miles insane. I'd say that's pretty bad.

The tinfoil hats might protect against it, but probably not at close range, which'll make fighting him hard. Plus, Cthulhu was basically a foot soldier for that species; the common interpretation is "biological weapon".

[Eulogy]

Or telekinetic subtlety. Of the Hat-removing kind.

But yeah. I'd like to see him knock a few planes out of the air and rip open APCs with "pure" sound and liquify everyone in them, or something.

Assuming he gets a chance to attack. Remember, DIMO(N) is watching the dimensional fabric, so Mikey's chances of getting a surprise attack (which he WILL NEED in order to do some damage, assuming that he's even considering it) are slim. He's here to rescue Urinal and bring him back in relatively one piece.

That means he has to find Urinal, drag him over to a portal (Urinal is poisoned, starving, dehydrated, carved up, and weary. He's not in any condition to put up a serious fight), push him through, and close said portal before either he or Urinal gets mauled, filleted, blown up, roasted, fried, or diced. He has to PROTECT Urinal and make sure he lives, so that Yah-Yah doesn't get curious.

I don't doubt that Mikey is packing heat, but the humans are packing much more, and he knows it. Moreover, he has to realize that now is NOT the time to be picking fights. If he gets seen, he gets blown up. If he is stupid enough to try blasting away foliage randomly (which he isn't), he'll just reveal his position, and he gets blown up. If he attacks, he gets blown up. And if he gets blown up, Urinal will either starve or get blown up too.

He likely won't waste precious time attacking. He'll try his damnest to evade dogs, aircraft both sub and supersonic, jeeps, and California's own terrain. He'll go in, find Urinal, and get out. If he attacks, it'll only be because he HAS to in order to remove the enemies in his way - and even then it's risky since he atands a good chance of the enemy pulling the trigger first.

Besides, it's not as if Urinal can help. If he tries snuffing out humans and dogs in his current state, he'll fail miserably. Not even if Mikey tries filpping caps, since time spent flipping caps and trying to snuff out humans is time spent having the humans shoot at Paul and Karla AND calling in reineforcements.

Unless Karla here has a secret weapon we don't know about yet, then that is how it's going to go down. And Karla stands a good chance of dying or failing anyway.

[Simon_Jester]

Or, in short form, what happens if we run into Cthulhu out there?

Cthulhu really wasn't that impressive. Boat through head and all that. I'd bet on our buddy Archduke Dagon vs him any day.

First of all, I was speaking metaphorically.

Second of all, I would point out that the whole boat-through-the-head thing doesn't seem to have done much more than slow him down for some minutes; his going back to sleep appears to have been more of a "stars aren't really right" thing. Good luck killing something that just flows back together when you blow it up; hopefully you can vaporize the entire species of the things before you run out of nukes.

And even that's assuming our hypothetical Cthulhuoids don't come from a really weird bubble universe where the properties of matter are skewed enough that they don't behave like baryonic matter as we're familiar with it... which, given how much violence Hell-electricity does to Maxwell's Laws, seems horribly probable. Until now, we've dealt only with bubble universes where the inhabitants are enough like us that their weapons work on us to the same extent that our weapons and tools work on them. Since we have better tools, advantage us. That doesn't have to be inevitably true, and we might not know we'd run into the problem until it was too late to undo our mistake.

It's strongly implied that this is exactly what happened to Yahweh and the demons: they started poking their noses into other bubble universes and found some stuff that they weren't ready to handle.
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Of course, the flip side to that is that there are going to be dimensions out there where we're Cthulhu, because we're the ones who can prance through their strongest "tear apart your molecular-cloud-structure" magnetic field weapons and start blasting them apart with compressed air spray cans or whatever.
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Cthulhu had the telepathic ability to render everything within a few thousand miles insane. I'd say that's pretty bad.

Yeah. Get too close to him, and you'll start thinking like an H.P. Lovecraft character. If that isn't scary, I don't know what is.

The tinfoil hats might protect against it, but probably not at close range, which'll make fighting him hard. Plus, Cthulhu was basically a foot soldier for that species; the common interpretation is "biological weapon".

Consider how dangerous he and his Star-spawn (lesser beings than himself) were to the Elder Things: another species from Lovecraft that possessed handheld energy weapons, some kind of built-in biological space drive, the ability to go into hibernation for something like thirty million years in Antarctic conditions, and whatever the hell bio/nanotech* monstrosity the Shoggoths are. I would tentatively estimate that the Elder Things' technology maxed out at at least a century or two ahead of ours, possibly more. And Cthulhu was, more or less by himself, still able to drive them out of their preferred habitat in the oceans of Earth onto high, uncomfortably dry land in Antarctica.

*Charles Stross interpreted the shoggoths as advanced nanotech, some kind of utility fog; I'd be inclined to accept that characterization because I can't think of any other way to describe their capabilities in terms of the known universe.

[Baughn]

Since you brought up the difference in physical laws between universes, there's an even scarier possibility to consider.

The differences we've seen so far may be natural, but chances are it's possible to engineer your own laws, according to deeper laws we haven't even glimpsed yet. What would happen would happen if we run into one that can do that?

..answer: Whatever the hell they want to happen. Oh, it's probably possible to fight back, but not without technology of the same level. The story's local scientists ought to consider this possibility as well.

[Samuel]

What I do believe is that nanotechnology would make them practical. Electrostatic motors get more efficient the smaller they are; at the molecular scale, you can put a tank's worth of horsepower into a cubic centimeter.

Er, care to explain to the laymen in the crowd how the heck that works?

[Baughn]

Sure. Let's see..

First, there are two possible definitions of "efficiency".

One is the percentage of power transformed into the form we want, as opposed to something else.

Another is the amount of power we can transform in a given volume; this is more properly known as power density. A smaller motor may have higher power density while transforming less power total; this is fine, since you can just use more motors.

In electrostatic motors, both increase as the motor size decreases. To explain why, first, let's consider how they work. The wikipedia article goes into more detail, but:

Electrostatic motors, as befits their name, operate by using static charge. To clarify, they generate mechanical power by moving charged particles (usually electrons; they're easier to move) into positions such that the static electrical field that is generated by an imbalance in charge exerts the required force. Such a static force can persist without any further effort on the motor's part, of course (modulo leakage), but to generate a dynamic effect such as rotational torque, the electrons must keep moving.

Efficiency increases as the motor gets smaller because the methods by which energy might leak decrease. There are two main methods by which energy can leak.

First, the electromagnetic field generated by the motor may leak outside the motor itself, doing work on objects we don't want it to do work on; this will necessarily require energy. The electric component of the field only leaks in the near field (eg. close to the motor), since the motor is neutrally charged overall; the size of the near field is proportional to the size of the motor.

The magnetic component, however, isn't inherently self-cancelling; therefore it's far harder to prevent from leaking. Magnetic fields are generated by moving charges; as mentioned above, electrostatic motors move charges around to generate their electric fields. The best way to reduce magnetic leakage would be to reduce the movement required; the only way to do that while maintaining power is to reduce the distance they have to travel. In other words, make the motor smaller.

Second, electrical leakage. Electrostatic motors require charge imbalances to operate; this translates to high voltages. For reasons I'll explain later, smaller motors can get the same power while using lower voltage; further, as motors get smaller, the voltage required drops faster than the relative insulation requirements increase - so you can in fact get away with less insulation, even relative to the power of the motor.

The power density is something else again. There is only one major phenomenon going on here:

The force exerted by an electrical charge upon another is proportional to the charge difference (i.e. voltage), and inversely proportional to the square of the distance between the charges.

Meanwhile, the insulation required between the two charges (vacuum will do nicely) to keep leakage below a reasonable level is simply proportional to the voltage; that's ohm's law.

In other words, when you halve the size of an electrostatic motor, you can cut voltage in half and keep the same level of leakage; meanwhile, halving its size would quadruple its power density, and cutting voltage in half will only halve it. End result: Halving the size of an electrostatic motor doubles its power density, while increasing efficiency.

Addendum: Biology uses electrostatic motors at the cell level, though it never quite figured out how to bundle them up to make better muscles. They're used a lot of places, for example for pumps in the cell wall; however, the most impressive use would be flagella.

[Darth Wong]

Baugh, nanotech does not eliminate economies of scale. It is best used to do microscopically detailed work which would not be practical using other methods. There is no way it would ever be cheaper than simple die-casting for a product which can be die-cast.

Also, it's worth noting that the cost of programming is non-trivial, yet nanotech wankers tend to assume it is completely trivial. Even today, using something as simple as basic CNC machining, it costs more to CNC machine a simple object than to manually machine it using 1930s-era technology. The reason is that while the CNC machine may do the same job with less operator intervention, it requires up-front programmer work which increases the overall cost of the product. It is primarily useful not to make it cheaper to machine things, but to make it possible to machine complex shapes which could not be easily machined manually.

PS. You should say something stupid like "magic power armour is inevitable once we have nanotech" and then backpedal to say "I'm not saying nanotech would transform our economy". The latter is no different from the former: you are attributing arbitrary magical transformative powers to nanotech which eliminate the need to justify arguments conventionally, thanks to an "X" factor which cannot be properly evaluated.

[Baughn]

You're complaining about a discrepancy between two statements based on very different assumptions.

I'm very aware that the design work takes time. That's why I wouldn't credit any revolutionary effects on the economy; there simply wouldn't be time for it. It'd happen over a period of years or decades, which makes it rather less than revolutionary. Though I do think we'd put a bit more effort into design software, and designing objects by basically plugging together lego bricks is easier than the strange circumlocutions CnC machines need to do. (Yeah, yeah, need to design the bricks too, I know. We'd need that to build a nanofactory in the first place, though.)

But power armor? There's no "magic" here, just a lot of very difficult design work. Yes, sure, it might take decades; so what?

Humans have the initiative here. The other pantheons have left them alone so far; there's no reason why they should feel a need to go haring off after them right away; instead, it'd be much smarter to just sit still until their technology plateaus, or at least slows down a little.

And that means "magic nanotech", simply because it's possible. At a minimum. Though I dare say you'd have trouble finding any concrete reasons for why it'd take very long, it wouldn't matter to my argument if you could.

[Darth Wong]

But power armor? There's no "magic" here, just a lot of very difficult design work.

Design work which would not be particularly facilitated by the existence of nanotech.

Yes, sure, it might take decades; so what?

So what? You claimed it was inevitable, that's what. You can't claim something is inevitable just by personal fiat, and you certainly can't claim that nanotech magically makes it inevitable.

Humans have the initiative here. The other pantheons have left them alone so far; there's no reason why they should feel a need to go haring off after them right away; instead, it'd be much smarter to just sit still until theire technology plateaus, or at least slows down a little.

And that means "magic nanotech", simply because it's possible. At a minimum. Though I dare say you'd have trouble finding any concrete reasons for why it'd take very long, it wouldn't matter to my argument if you could.

You don't know whether it's possible. And by that, I don't mean that it's not possible to make a working device you could call "power armour", but that it's possible to make a power armour that would actually be militarily useful. Moreover, you have still not explained what this nanotech red-herring has to do with it. Why bring up nanotech at all, when the design problems of power armour have nothing to do with its presence or absence?

[Count Chocula]

Why would humans even need nanotech? We have Satan's minions on our side. Big, bad-ass demons with big, bad-ass human ordnance and a bone to pick with Heaven could be trained and an effective force long before we could develop magi-nano-bot-tech to make super-armor. And we already have tactical drones; hell, hobbyist airplanes have been flying for years with wireless cameras attached. The idea of itty-bitty machines making kick-ass armament is appealing, especially if the story continues past the Heavenly dimension, but I don't think it's necessary or germane to Pantheocide.

[Darth Wong]

RPVs seem like a better idea than power armour. To take an obvious example, bomb disposal robots are a vastly better idea than even the best possible bomb-disposal suit. Even one with nanotech.

[Baughn]

Urk. Quite, a bomb-disposal suit may be the worst idea I've ever heard.

And.. fine. I'll admit that, as I don't have a concrete design for any sort of power armor around, I can't absolutely state that it'd work. I also lack any concrete reasons for why it shouldn't work, but of course that's only weak evidence in favor, as I could simply have missed some.

The reason I consider nanotechnology to be important is that, to be useful, a suit of power armor needs to be not much larger than the person it's protecting; ideally, it'd have the same form factor as clothing. Further, the more of its mass is active systems instead of mere bulk armor, the better it'd work. Nanotechnology would allow for more miniaturization than non-nanotech; currently by quite a large factor.

Would power armor be useful? Well, that rather depends on what it's up against. It's entirely possible that we'd find drone swarms handier, or perhaps something we've yet to conceptualize at all. Perhaps, by the time we have anything useful at all, we'd find it handier to use purely-robotic bodies instead.

[Darth Wong]

The reason I consider nanotechnology to be important is that, to be useful, a suit of power armor needs to be not much larger than the person it's protecting; ideally, it'd have the same form factor as clothing.

You figure it would make sense to wrap a soldier in noisy power-hungry maintenance-intensive multi-million dollar high-tech environmentally-controlled armour that could be easily defeated by a .50cal round?

Further, the more of its mass is active systems instead of mere bulk armor, the better it'd work. Nanotechnology would allow for more miniaturization than non-nanotech; currently by quite a large factor.

You can't miniaturize armour with nanotech. There is no nanotech magic which would make ultra-light thin sheets able to withstand high-calibre armour-piercing rounds.

Would power armor be useful? Well, that rather depends on what it's up against. It's entirely possible that we'd find drone swarms handier, or perhaps something we've yet to conceptualize at all. Perhaps, by the time we have anything useful at all, we'd find it handier to use purely-robotic bodies instead.

The idea seems like a non-starter right off the bat, except for very specialized circumstances perhaps, although I'm not sure what those circumstances would be.

[Baughn]

Fighting demons from hell, perhaps? Just a thought.

Also, you might want to re-check those .50cal figures for running into diamondoid. The diamondoid would shatter, granted (hopefully only in a limited area), but I'm pretty sure it'd do the same job as ceramic plating does today. Of course, that just means you need better bullets..

As for wrapping the soldier in armor that can get defeated.. hell, yeah. It's a heck of a lot better than not using armor, considering how expensive soldiers are. Hm. I don't personally believe they'd need to be all that high-maintenance or noisy, though; we aren't, and biology and nanotech are basically the same thing.

It occurs to me, of late, man-portable amounts of armor are mostly only useful for stopping incidental damage; if you get the main gun of a tank targeted on you, you're dead, no questions asked. The Pantheocide universe has conveniently provided opponents whose offensive abilities may not be on par with our defensive ones, however; why not take advantage of it?

[Count Chocula]

The idea seems like a non-starter right off the bat, except for very specialized circumstances perhaps, although I'm not sure what those circumstances would be.

If hordes of carnivorous, yellow-blooded centauroids with railguns and lasers and monomolecular-bladed bomas invade from outer space, you'll need armor suits. Because John Ringo says so!

Practically speaking, the suits would have to be a) made of a metallic compound, to resist the attacks of Uriel and his ilk (I can't believe there's only one angel who can attack that way), b) completely isolated environmentally (I can't believe Heaven does not have its equivalent to Lugasharmanaska), c) resistant against gigantic lightning bolts when Yahweh takes the field, and d) oh yeah economical to manufacture in large numbers. The last consideration is IMO the most important one.

[Baughn]

Metallic.. hey, now there's a question.

To all appearances, what blocks EM also blocks telepathic influences of all kinds. Now, I'm not going to ask if that means they are EM, because that would be just silly, but - what do you think, would non-metallic conductors also be able to block it?

[Darth Wong]

Fighting demons from hell, perhaps? Just a thought.

Not when heavier weapons are a much cheaper and simpler countermeasure.

Also, you might want to re-check those .50cal figures for running into diamondoid. The diamondoid would shatter, granted (hopefully only in a limited area), but I'm pretty sure it'd do the same job as ceramic plating does today. Of course, that just means you need better bullets.

Ceramics are shit on their own, just like any highly brittle material. You have to wrap them in something ductile in order to create a composite of some sort which will resist fracture propagation. Hence, this will be heavy shit.

As for wrapping the soldier in armor that can get defeated.. hell, yeah. It's a heck of a lot better than not using armor, considering how expensive soldiers are.

Not when it would greatly increase the logistical support required for the soldier. Passive body armour puts very little increased load on the logistical train; the same cannot be said for hypothetical power armour.

Hm. I don't personally believe they'd need to be all that high-maintenance or noisy, though; we aren't, and biology and nanotech are basically the same thing.

You're joking right? Biological organisms are enormously high-maintenance. We require a constant stream of highly varied nutrients and fluids in order to keep operating, literally administered every damned day. And are you now suggesting that the entire suit would be operating on nanotech? How are you supposed to move heavy .50cal-proof plates of armour around with micro-scale motors?

It occurs to me, of late, man-portable amounts of armor are mostly only useful for stopping incidental damage; if you get the main gun of a tank targeted on you, you're dead, no questions asked. The Pantheocide universe has conveniently provided opponents whose offensive abilities may not be on par with our defensive ones, however; why not take advantage of it?

Because a Hummer with a .50cal gun on it is a far more effective demon-stopper for the money than a guy wearing some imaginary wanktech power armour that doesn't exist?

[Count Chocula]

^ I don't see why not, if we know at what frequencies Uriel's and demons' "mind control rays o'doom" operate. We already know carbon compounds work on radar-range EM frequencies (EDIT: or do they? The F-22 has extensive carbon fiber construction, but for all I know the RAM is silver thread). Plus, it would give a hypothetical armor suit more freedom of motion and lighter weight. As a guard against shrapnel, as mentioned earlier, lightweight armor suits may have a purpose; I'm not convinced they'd be Gundam or ACS-level superweapons.

[Setzer]

I think the discussion about Nanotech is a waste of time. Stuart has established time and time again that the world is stretched thin trying to mass produce the weapons we have now, weapons we already know how to make. Why would we bother with nanotechnology armaments unless we were desperately flailing about trying to find a technological silver bullet like the war Third Reich? We'd have to research it, fine tune the technology, mass produce it, ship it to the various warzones, train everyone in its use, and what exactly would powered armor do in this war? Why build it when existing weapons are so effective the enemy nearly wets their wings just thinking about them>

Nanotechnology is not anywhere near as useful to the war effort as portal research and nephilim sensitives are. Unless DIMON has some incredible discovery that offers a better way of invading heaven using nanites, I really can't see any massive government research project being done until after the war is over.

[Darth Wong]

I think the discussion about Nanotech is a waste of time. Stuart has established time and time again that the world is stretched thin trying to mass produce the weapons we have now, weapons we already know how to make. Why would we bother with nanotechnology armaments unless we were desperately flailing about trying to find a technological silver bullet like the war Third Reich? We'd have to research it, fine tune the technology, mass produce it, ship it to the various warzones, train everyone in its use, and what exactly would powered armor do in this war? Why build it when existing weapons are so effective the enemy nearly wets their wings just thinking about them>

Nanotechnology is not anywhere near as useful to the war effort as portal research and nephilim sensitives are. Unless DIMON has some incredible discovery that offers a better way of invading heaven using nanites, I really can't see any massive government research project being done until after the war is over.

Well put. Unfortunately, there is a bit of Star Trek geek in a lot of sci-fi fans, and they tend to imagine wanktech solutions to military problems.

[Simon_Jester]

The topic originally came up in the context of a hypothetical next war, one fought against other bubble universes after we've had some time to prepare.

If we're talking about how to fight a war next week, I suspect Baughn would agree nanotech is irrelevant. If we're talking about how to fight a war twenty years from now, it's relevant enough to deserve a few minutes' thought, if nothing more.

[Darth Wong]

The topic originally came up in the context of a hypothetical next war, one fought against other bubble universes after we've had some time to prepare.

Actually, against unknown threats, a less complex weapon system is better because it is easier to re-purpose and modify to combat unexpected problems. The more complex the system is, the more difficult and time-consuming it will be to re-purpose and redesign.

[Setzer]

Maybe a nanotech injection inside the body could act as a subdermal tinfoil hat? A bit harder to knock off then a metal lined helmet.

[CaptainChewbacca]

Maybe a nanotech injection inside the body could act as a subdermal tinfoil hat? A bit harder to knock off then a metal lined helmet.

You could just install an actual metal plate in the head, which is a practical option we can already do. Injecting liquid metal into someone's skull is generally bad.

[tim31]

Or even easier, make a tinfoil hat with an elastic band.

Why do people so often insist on a complicated solution for a simple problem?